


Always keep your head

by LeaperSonata



Category: Wendy Trilogy - S. J. Tucker (Song Cycle)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, Neverland, Pirates, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:52:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeaperSonata/pseuds/LeaperSonata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Wendy'd got herself a crew of ruthless men and brave<br/>and they'd terrorize the Lost Boys each and every Saturday.<br/>One day Wendy says to Peter, "I'd like more girls on my crew."<br/>So Peter goes a-hunting Lost Girls and brings back Green-eyed Sue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always keep your head

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gamerfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/gifts).



> I had never thought about writing fic for these songs and then I saw the request for it and I was attacked by bunnies! I hope I did it justice.
> 
> I also hope that this isn't intolerably angsty. I kept trying to make it less sad but it wouldn't do it. EVERYONE IS TRAGIC SORRY.
> 
> Beta courtesy of the incomparable and amazing Framlingem, whose name I continue to spell wrong on the first try, argh.
> 
> Prompt: ""Wendy smiles a smile and says 'I'll miss you, dearest one.'" I'm dying to know more about Green-Eyed Sue and her relationship with Wendy. What was Sue's life like before Peter brought her to Neverland? Why was she sad in her previous world, and why was she so eager to get away from it? Were she and Wendy best of friends from the start, or did they have some difficulties along the way? Were they only ever friends, or did their relationship eventually become something more? Did Wendy ever think twice about leaving Sue behind in Neverland? I have so many questions and I hope your story can answer some of them! Femslashy interpretations of events would be appreciated, but are fully optional."

_Green-Eyed Sue was feisty, quite surly and quite sad_  
 _Called Suzy Rotten by her mum and Tomboy by her dad._

*

Sue curled into her window seat and glared out at the backyard, where her brother and his friends were having enthusiastic and rather rough adventures. It had been several years since she was deemed too much of a girl to be played with anymore. When she had complained to their parents, she had been told it was more than time that she stop running around in the muck and shouting like a boy.

There were things that were proper for girls to do, and anything that was fun wasn't among them.

Neither was anything that allowed her to let off the energy seething under her skin. Swordfights with the boys had helped, but now she was stuck without an outlet beyond her own imagination, which offered only mental relief and not physical. She could go climb a tree and hide in its branches, but that was far from duelling through the park.

Fighting made all her senses come alive, and it was fighting that got her in the most trouble. Even if she was defending someone else from bullies, it was the same story. Her mother would sigh, and look pointedly over her head as if she wasn't there. Her father would fix her with a gold glare that flicked over any and all injuries to her person or her clothing.

"Tell that Suzy Rotten that she's to go to bed without supper, and she's to mend her clothes herself," her mother would say to her father, and her father would repeat it as if Sue really couldn't hear her. "Tomboys are not liked or attractive," he would add. "You will never marry if you keep this up, and we will not support you in your... indiscretion."

Every time, exactly the same words. And Sue would trudge up the stairs to her room, wetting a flannel in the bathroom to bathe her wounds on the way, and sit in her windowseat.

She rather thought she didn't want to marry anyone at all, let alone someone who would look down on her for a lack of feminine decorum the way her parents did. It was, however, unfortunately true that there was little other recourse in life for her.

It would be wonderful to go away somewhere - into a story, where nobody minded if there was dirt on your cheek. But even the Lost Boys were all, well, boys.

*

_At the chance to be a pirate and call Peter Pan a friend,_  
 _Her face lit up, her sadness fled, and she ne'er looked home again._  
 _She proudly followed Wendy, and she ne'er went home again._

*

"Would you like to come to Neverland?"

Sue stared at the figure in her window. Oh, god, she thought, it's Peter Pan. She bit her tongue on an instinctive Yes and instead asked, "For what? I'm not a boy, to be a Lost Boy."

Peter grinned, fey and feral. "But I'm looking for Lost Girls, to be pirates! Our Wendy is the Captain of the ship now, and she's looking for girls to be on her crew. Care to learn swordwork?"

Sue's face went blank with amazement for a moment, then lit with a fierce joy. "Gladly."

Peter beckoned to a floating light (oh god, it must be Tinker Bell, Sue thought, I'm meeting Tinker Bell) and the fairy sprinkled a trail of glittering flecks of light down onto Sue. "Think of a happy thought," he instructed.

Sue looked up at the stars and thought of the freedom to be whoever she wanted to be, and her feet lifted as her heart soared.

*

_Sue becomes first mate, as she's the first Lost Girl to live_  
 _upon the ship and give to Wendy all the spirit she can give._

*

The ship was amazing. It wasn't quite everything she'd wanted in life and never known how to ask for even in her heart of hearts, but it was close. The crew were still all grizzled old men with missing legs and eyes - and they looked to _her_ for their orders. Green-Eyed Sue, First Mate.

And there was Red-Handed Jill.

Jill, swinging across the deck on a rope, laughing and spinning.

Jill, duelling the pirates for practice, her small feet and narrow blade twice as quick as theirs, effortlessly besting men three times her age again and again.

Jill, leading the crew, fierce and wild and strong and still a girl. She fought in skirts and wore ribbons in her hair and no one ever said "tomboy" to her in that familiar disgusted tone.

Jill, with her sparkling eyes, catching Sue up in a wild jig across the deck, beckoning her to follow up into the crow's nest to look out at Neverland and the stars, stepping lightly out across the world because it was hers and she knew it and no pirate man could put her down.

Jill, who had defeated Captain Hook where Peter Pan had failed, and had taken his place and his ship, and was so much more than he could ever have been.

Jill, who was no one's mother and no one's wife, no one's proper perfect daughter.

Jill, who made the world open up and show her a hundred different paths where there had only ever been a closed door in Sue's face.

Sue had never thought she ever could be so happy in the world, that it could be allowed to live like this, anywhere. Even Neverland. She had never dared to dream there could be Lost Girls as well as Lost Boys.

She stood in the bow of the ship at night with the wind in her hair and thought that she wouldn't need fairy dust to fly, her heart was so light.

*

_Wendy's ship it prospers and the girls are eating well,_  
 _A roving band of sisters, singing songs and raising hell._

*

One by one, Peter brought them new girls for the crew, and one by one the pirates retired to their own island, away from the coast of Peter's. One by one, girls caught fire from within at the prospect of a life unconstrained. Jill taught them swordplay, or delegated Sue to, and Sue took a fierce pride in her place as the first Lost Girl, and her responsibilities as First Mate. She cut her way through the world, by Jill's side.

She tried to hide her jealousy at Jill's attention going to the other girls, at wild dances around the deck that were not hers and Jill's alone. She watched Jill out of the corners of her eyes, always, for Jill was the brightest flame of them all in Sue's eyes, and she did not realize she was seen.

It was the greatest of shocks to her when Jill came up behind her, at the bow of the ship at midnight, and slid her arms around her waist. The press of Jill's lips against her own was everything she had never dared to think she wanted, and she thought her heart might burst from the force of her joy.

*

_Next night the ship sets sail out to the edges of the sky._  
 _Wendy calls her crew on deck and tells them her surprise._  
 _Above old London Town she bids them follow through the air_  
 _And invites them home to meet her mum and be her sisters there._

*

The girls looked around them, now that they had come down out of the clouds, and they all seemed confused by what they saw: not Neverland, not any of the lands of faerie, but smog and steel and stone in London town.

Jill stood before the wheel, her face alight, and called out to the crew. "I have a surprise for you, my darlings! I'm going home, to my mother. And all of you are invited to come with me, to meet her, to be my sisters."

Out of the corner of her eye, Sue saw the faces of some of the other girls light, while others went as still and stiff as she felt her own becoming. Leave Neverland? Go back to the world? She stood frozen for long moments while the excited girls thronged around their captain, chattering happily and absently combing their hair flat with their fingers.

Jill looked for her first mate, and her eyes caught Sue's still ones across the length of the deck. Sue forced herself into motion and saluted jerkily. "Permission to speak plainly, Captain."

Looking confused, Jill nodded her assent. "Of course, Sue. Always."

Sue feels her voice grow cold and hard. "I'd sooner die than leave this ship. As a sailor, I've had my freedom, and I would not give it up for worlds. With your leave, Captain, I would," Sue swallowed, her mouth dry, "Carry on the legacy of our Red-Handed Jill."

The other girls who had shared misgivings looked relieved, while the ones thronging about Jill looked confused.

*

_Wendy smiles a smile and says "I'll miss you, dearest one._  
 _But as this journey ends I see a new one has begun!_  
 _So carry on as admiral and Captain in my stead._  
 _Guide your crew with a steady hand, and always keep your head."_

*

Sue sailed away into the night, leaving behind Wendy Moira Angela Darling, a girl who would never again be laughing Red-Handed Jill, and only the stars saw the tears that glittered at the corners of her eyes.

*

Some nights, when it was still and quiet and the sky was clear, Wendy would sit in the old window seat in the nursery and look out at the stars, as she had used to do so long ago.

But it wasn't Peter Pan that she dreamed of now, as she had then. It was a girl with laughing green eyes and a wicked way with a sword, who danced her way across the deck of a ship and seemed effortless in combat. A girl who had expanded to fill the horizons of her world when the walls had been taken away.

She had come home to London because she missed her mother, but she had left her heart in Neverland in the hands of her First Mate.

Sisters aplenty, she had, the Lost Girls who had chosen to come down out of the sky alongside her - but it wasn't a sister she missed.

She had truly never thought that Sue might stay behind. It had seemed a grand idea, to be done with childhood and adventures and grow up and go home. Her mother was devoted, and would be sure to welcome new sisters to their house.

Neverland had been an idyll for her, but not an escape. She had never thought that Sue might have taken Peter's hand for different reasons than her own.

By the time Sue stood her ground, it was too late to back down, and she wasn't sure she should, besides. She wanted to grow up. She had the creeping fear that if she had stayed behind, she might have resented her darling Green-Eyed Sue, and that was the worst thought in the world.

Wendy missed her so much.

But Jill had been a game, and Wendy had been ready to stop playing. She had thought that Neverland was a game for everyone, even the boys. Perhaps Peter never wanted to stop playing, but surely most people would eventually be ready to leave childhood behind and go back to the world.

It was hard to escape the feeling that what she had done to Sue was a betrayal.

Sue had loved Jill, and Jill wasn't real. Jill was only someone Wendy had play-acted at being.

She had seen the look in Sue's eyes as she sailed away, and she know that Green-Eyed Sue was more real than Red-Handed Jill had ever been, and that she had loved her captain.

It wasn't Sue's fault that that captain didn't exist. It was Wendy's, all Wendy's - who was always and only Wendy, in truth, and had never been Jill at all.


End file.
